


Terminal Voltage

by Thene



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Crack Pairings, M/M, Necromancy, Rivalslash, electrokink, seven-foot-tall electric Russians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-22
Updated: 2009-11-22
Packaged: 2017-10-03 13:36:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thene/pseuds/Thene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Volgin taking a walk with the rain.  Set between the Virtuous Mission and Operation Snake Eater.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Terminal Voltage

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Repeat To Fade challenge at MGS_Slash on LJ, in which you had to write a pairing one of whom had tried to kill the other (either in canon or in the fic). Yes, this was the worst pairing I could come up with. Yes, I ship it anyway.

_Every time we meet you say it_

a word made of your fear

a word to stop you listening to the thunder

kuwabara kuwabara

_Every time, the word._

Volgin had never seen rain like this. It came from summer skies that had been clear only minutes before and should be clear still - it was rain from a winter's storm at sea. It was striking his face as he walked; it seeped through his clothing to his skin. It was filling the swampy river, making it run fast and clean.

It brought lightning.

_Kuwabara._

The lightning kept its distance, like any other wary enemy would.

He walked in the storm because it was his enemy. He felt its hate running damp trails down his neck, and he enjoyed the gentle touch, because for all its wild displays, the weather could not harm him. He had insulation, shelter. _Kuwabara, kuwabara._ Beneath his word, he could revel in his adversary's useless defiance.

_They await you in the river_

in their hundreds

shoulder to shoulder

from bank to bank

and between they and you

between you and I

Only the word.

He had asked countless doctors and scientists to tell him what he was, why he was, and they had cowered and mumbled and looked upon him with eyes so cowardly that he considered them almost not worth the trouble of tormenting. But he did. If they would not speak of it, he would show them what he was.

It was Granin who explained it. Granin, who seemed to have a heart too bitter to know fear - his indifference was as disgusting as the others' terror, but he must stay alive, for now. _Kuwabara_. "Like a battery," he'd said. "Your whole body is a sequence of voltaic cells, and the anions and cations move from pole to pole..." Too many words. But he grasped the idea, a charge built up grain by grain, beginning in a fingertip and progressing by slivers across the whole span of his arms. A power that grew through opposition. It moved through him like a pianist sliding from key to key, hands stretching from the lowest note to the highest.

"It's the terminal voltage - the difference in charge between one hand and the other - that makes the lightning," Granin had said.

Too many words, when he needed only one. _Kuwabara_.

_Your strength is your undoing_

a live wire, a torrent of death upon your hands

And between the two, your word, a word and time.

Volgin had always looked for faces in the clouds - smiles in high places, wrinkled cheeks and billowing curls of hair, folded eyes with the sun behind them. For many years, they had been the only faces he ever saw that were not filled with fear of himself and his strange electric nature. _Kuwabara._ But the emotions he roused in others had increased in range with the years - he had seen hatred and awe and pain and fury, and sometimes the finality of death. He had seen Ivan, cupped him between two sparking hands, and been unable to name the heady warmth that burned between them.

Ivan, alone of all the souls in the world, saw his nature as positive.

And Ivan was the only one who had ever made him wonder what it felt like to be held between his own hands, to feel the perverse ecstasy of having every nerve in your body overpowered by electricity. _Kuwabara._ No other had made him care to consider what it would be like being anyone except who he was.

But still he looked above. He wanted to see what the heavens themselves felt towards him.

On days like this, the faces above him were vast and dark and tears ran from their empty eyes. They showed him no fear, but lately, he did not meet their gaze.

_You will know how it feels soon enough_

You will know what I feel soon enough.

He felt invincible. He raised his hands to the sky, and stared up at the clouds, curled sheets of heavy greys and purples, as bright as if they had come to crown an emperor.

Lightning flashed in the far distance, and in the air between his hands he saw a drop of blood, a shadow.

_Kuwabara_ -

_a word that only delays the moment_

when the charge returns to earth

It could not touch the ground. His word kept it at bay. His word against the storm. The thunder rang in his ears, trying to drown it out. _Kuwabara!_ He was _stronger_ than the tempest.

He felt the chill touch of water at his heels, and realised his boots had sunk beneath him into ground thick with water. The river had burst its banks. The storm had broken its confines, sent the Volga to carpet the world in its murk. Volgin turned and strode away, every step settling in water, sparks sizzling away into muddy water, his capacitance spent pointlessly into the earth like so much spilled seed. He was stronger than this. The rain still pelted his head, hard and steady and he knew well enough that it would begone soon, and he knew very well that it would return. To watch him. It was his enemy, the only worthy adversary he had ever had.

He walked away from the flood, through a world full of puddles and shades.

_Kuwabara._

His word. He needed it. He would always need it. He would always have it. He stepped through the iron door, and extended a gloved hand back to the space outside, and watched the rain fall upon it. He pulled it back to his chest, curled into a fist, and watched water run down his knuckles in rivulets.

Was this all the storm had? He had _ten million volts_ and all that opposed him were _a few drops of water_?

He shook his hand and raindrops splashed against his skin, so gently he barely felt them. They were nothing to him.

_I have patience._

And all you have is one word.


End file.
